Welcome to our weekly newsletter!

15 June 2025

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Hey friend,

I'm feeling the effects of stretching myself too thin and focusing on too many things at once. My day job, my night job (writing articles for you), my family and friends, my health and my finances. While all of these things are necessary, it's hard to keep them all in balance. My new subscribers count is very low and I feel as if my rate of writing is lower. Oh well, I guess there's nothing to do except to keep going. Hope you have an awesome week ahead.

Some Thoughts

Are you playing to your "unfair advantages"? Are you young/experienced? Have a background in sports? Know a thing or two about crypto? Have a friend who knows how to code? Live in a big/small country? Everything can be an advantage if you frame it right. Take the time to think about your advantages and make full use of them.

What you will learn this week:

☀️ The hidden pattern of success

🌍 Why looking back helps you look forward

🍄 BONUS - Why you need to feel free to explore

Collecting Dots. The One Skill That Trumps All Others.

Steve Jobs (Apple visionary) famously said that you can only connect the dots looking backwards, not looking forwards.

Dharmesh Shah (founder of Hubspot) took it a step further. Advising that you should be “a collector of dots”.

David Epstein (author of Range) said that your goal should be to cultivate a wide variety of skills (have a wide range).

What these thinkers are telling us is that success is highly correlated to how broad your knowledge is, and how well you can integrate seemingly-distant ideas.

Cultivate range (collect dots) in your life, because your success depends on it.

The Hidden Pattern of Success

Most people think that becoming really good at one thing is the key to success. But some of the world’s most successful people say something different: the real key is collecting lots of different knowledge and experiences.

Think of your mind as a vast night sky. Each piece of knowledge you gain is like a new star appearing. By itself, each star is beautiful – but when you start connecting them, you create your own constellations of ideas that no one else can see.

Looking Backward to Move Forward

Steve Jobs understood this perfectly. He said you can only understand how different parts of your life connect when you look back at them. It’s like being a detective who finally sees how all the clues fit together, but only after gathering them all.

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You might enjoy this:

Jonathan @effectivepm_ Don’t hate degrees. They are still valuable. They still teach skills that are almost impossible or impractical to learn alone. But take your degree and add the necessary “street-smart” skills on top. You know the ones I’m talking about. 8:7 PM • Jun 12, 2025 0 Retweets 1 Likes

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Postscript

I've now done 10 hours of free coaching calls with new project managers trying to get into the industry. (If you want to jump on a call send me a reply)

I see the same issues over and over. I will go into them in a future newsletter. But one that I want to highlight here is that PM's are just not taking enough shots on goal. If you are looking for a new role, you need to be speaking to at least one person per day. Preferably more. Contacting 1 per week (or 1 per month) is just going to lead nowhere.

Until next time,

Jonathan (The Effective Project Manager)

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